Transition Town Tooting

Tag: Gardening Skills

  • The Community Garden bakes a loaf of bread

    That is the plan anyway. How did it come about?

    Many years ago a previous community garden group grew wheat and managed to bake one loaf of bread from it. So why not try it again?

    Inspired by one of our members who was asking for a source of getting wheat for her garden we also got ourselves some seeds. We tend to grow low maintenance crop in the garden as we don’t have the resource to tend to delicate plants. We also found in recent years weather volatility is driving us towards the hardier end of plants that tolerate draught and rain. So the wheat seemed a good idea.

    We got in touch with the Brockwell Bake Association https://www.brockwell-bake.org.uk/ who offer ‘April Bearded’, a grain last commonly cultivated during the 19th century. Their seed stock of this was grown and harvested by Kent farmer Andrew Lingham at Court Farm, Halling. Heritage wheats are generally more suitable for non-farm and organic farm sowing as they do not require the chemical fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides, fungicides and growth regulator typically used in conventional wheat farming for success with modern wheat lines.

    We prepared an area that we had to clear to give our apple tree a bit more space and sowed our 2m2 of wheat in rows. Watered it twice to allow germination and now wait and see.

    Below are photos from the first 3 weeks of the wheat project. We will provide regular updates on our Community Garden Instagram.

    But do come by on a Saturday 11.00 till 13.00 (and often until much later – because once you are in the garden it’s hard to leave) and join us in sowing and planting for the next season.

    Find out more about the garden here.

  • Sowing the seeds in TTT’s ACE goody bags

    If you took home one of our TTT goodie bags and are wondering what to do with the packet of seeds in it, here are some simple planting instructions.

    Radish 

    You can grow these in the ground or in containers or window boxes.
    Sow thinly in soil and cover with 1.5cm fine soil. Firm down gently and keep moist.
    Seedlings should appear within 2-3 weeks.
    Thin out the plants if necessary and keep soil moist. Radishes should be ready to harvest in 4-6 weeks.

    Lettuce
    You can grow these in the ground, containers or even hanging baskets (good for evading snails!)

    Sow thinly in soil and cover with 1.5cm fine soil.

    Firm down gently and keep moist.
    Seedlings should appear in 7-14 days.
    Thin out seedlings if necessary and keep moist and weed-free.
    Pick and use when needed
    Peas 
    Grow these in the ground of a large pot. You will need to support the plants with netting or bamboo canes and string.
    Plant seeds 5cm apart and cover with 5cm of fine soil. Firm down gently and keep moist. Seedlings should appear within 10-14 days.

    Protect young plants from birds with twigs or netting and remember to support the plants. Keep moist and weed-free. Pick when ready.
    Send us some photos of your vegetable-growing successes!


  • Love Wandsworth Food free & fun family event Tuesday February 14th

    All the family is invited:

      
    All invited to this  fun half-term event on Tuesday 14th February, 2:00pm-4:30 pm.
    Location is The Venue, Park Court, Battersea SW11 4LD
    Please sign up on Eventbrite for free here: https://love-wandsworth2017.eventbrite.co.uk

    There will be lots of activities and good ideas to share on the day, all about locally grown food, eating well and reducing waste.
    You can read and download a pdf of the event flyer by clicking here

    TTT celebrates local food and participation in our weekly sessions at the Tooting Community Garden, and of course at the annual Foodival

    This year it’s going to be our 
    tenth Tooting Foodival!
    Sept 16th & 17th in the heart of Tooting
     

    We’re planning now, and if you have ideas you’d like to try out, or resources you would like to contribute, or if you would like to volunteer, come and help make it special:

    • we can chat at the Fun Day on Feb 14th
    • come and chat at the next Tooting Green Drinks on February 15th, 7:30-9:30pm at The Selkirk, 60 Selkirk Rd,  SW17 0ES
    • come to our monthly open meeting on February 23rd, 7:00-9:00 at Al Farah Cafe, 137 Mitcham Rd, SW17 9P
    • or email us at transitiontown tooting@gmail.com 
    We’d love to hear from you

  • Growing Tooting finale – the 8th weekend of TTT’s local grow-your-own classes completes the series

    In the final local growing sessions in Balham, Tooting and Wandsworth we celebrated progress and looked at what comes next now the programme is complete. 

    We discussed harvesting and preparing food (and bringing any surpluses to the Tooting Foodival), and asked about what the participants might need next in their growing journey. 
    Suggestions so far: ‘local gardeners’ question time’, a Facebook group, occasional meetings, visiting each others’ growing spaces.

    Plus, local community gardens including Tooting Community Garden and Wendelsworth Community Garden can offer support.

    Exploring the herb bed
    With the Balham group, Rose identified plants and explained how the herb bed at Tooting Community Garden is managed, in particular how foliage is cut and left lying to suppress weeds and help prepare the ground for sowing – and the group raised a glass to celebrate.
    Fresh produce laid out on the Eatwell pie chart
    With the Tooting group, Belinda took us through the new Public Health England Eatwell Guide. The Guide illustrates how to achieve eating a healthy dietary balance of good food – including what we can grow in our gardens.
    Our 8th Growing Tooting Handout is available for all: please click here. To see all 8 handouts, and to read each fortnightly blog post, click on GROWING TOOTING in the quick links above.  
    Hats off to Martin for writing the handouts and facilitating the delivery of Growing Tooting so brilliantly! And to the others who co-facilitated: Eleanor, Belinda, Rose, Jeni and more.

    In summary the Growing Tooting series of 30 local workshops reached 24 people who came to each session, another 24 who came to some of each local series, and another two dozen who are interested for another time.  70+ people are connected in a new way to local growing and each other. 


    There’s an evaluation under way, and we’ll share the results.

    There’s been a second major part of Growing Tooting’s activities. As agreed with the Wandsworth Big Society Fund who gave us financial support for the whole programme, we also supported local gardeners with the development of growing spaces. We’ve been working with six gardens. Please see our blog post from March for more info.

    Two examples include:
    Ravenstone Primary School. The school garden’s layout and access has been improved so children do not get so muddy on wet ground before returning to their next class.
    The school Gardening Club has been encouraged and enthused by Mary, Barbara and Richard.
    The garden has extended its reach to link with the teaching at the school, school events such as the Summer Fair and the parent body and wider community networks.
    Talking of community links, Thomas from Ravenstone pushed a planted-up wheelbarrow in TTT’s #TourdeTooting extravaganza ten days ago.

    CARAS Women’s Drop-in Group. TTT already work with CARAS on TTT’s Rooting in Tooting project. Growing Tooting support helped us work with a new group of CARAS service users, 12 to 18 adult refugee women who attend a weekly class devoted to english language and to participation together exploring new skills. A programme of seven facilitated sessions saw the women planting at their drop-in site, exploring favourite foods and recipes, and learning about sprouting seeds and grains at home. 
    Many thanks to Silvia, Fio, Jane, Lucy, Hilary, Rosalind, Jeni and more who helped to run these classes, and to many friends who donated plants, including Martin, Jane, Deb, Fio, Chuck, and Brockwell Park Community Greenhouses.

    Finally – do get in touch with us at TTT to explore how to start or keep on Growing Tooting (and Balham and Wandsworth). 
    Thanks all for taking part!
    – Chuck 

  • Report from the seventh weekend of Growing Tooting ‘grow your own food’ classes

    Here’s the report from the seventh weekend of our Growing Tooting ‘grow your own food’ local fortnightly classes. We’ve been offering these in Balham, Tooting and Wandsworth since April.

    The common themes this week have been exploring more ambitious planting schemes, visiting other local gardens, and looking at forest gardening.

    So: here’s a group planting a ‘Three Sisters’ bed in Balham: 
    That means establishing a bed with three complementary crops (sweet corn, beans, pumpkin) which combine well in terms of habit, shade needs and care. It’s a fascinating traditional native american method making good use of limited cultivated land.

    The Tooting group visited the Tooting Community Garden
    Here they are comparing our bread wheat with an experimental bed of teff, a ‘wonder grain’ from Ethiopia.


    One of the Wandsworth groups
    visited members’ allotments in King George’s Park.
    That’s a nice scene!

    This fortnight’s Seventh Growing Tooting Handout is available to everyone by clicking here.
    The focus is Forest Gardening: as a development of the permaculture conversations in the 6th weekend of Growing Tooting. It’s a fascinating method where short-term crops are not planted, and the plot is managed to produce from perennial ground cover plants, bushes and trees.

    That’s very different from the experience most of us have on our allotments or balconies! 
    Keeping up the theme of visiting inspiring gardens, a great place to experience a half-way house between growing in beds and developing wilder forest growing is at Spiralfields Community Garden, part of the wonderful Spitalfields City Farm in Tower Hamlets. 

    At Spiralfields they have dumped 60+ tons of soil in hillocks and valleys right on top of existing paving…and planted trees which will break through the concrete in time.

    The whole space is a super-productive oasis right alongside the Eurostar tracks.
    Visiting info for Spitalfields City Farm – click here.

    One of the UK’s gurus of Forest Gardening is Martin Crawford.
    He finds that with a mature forest garden, just a few day’s work per year produces a big proportion of his family’s food -though some of the crops are not very familiar. Info here.

    Martin’s garden is just under a hectare (as it’s Euro 2016, that’s the size of two football pitches).
    Many of us make plans of our planting beds; Martin has identified every tree on his site….!

    He’s written a comprehensive guide and runs regular courses in Devon (see details online here).
    Courses are highly recommended if you want to immerse yourself…

    Always new things to explore in gardening!
    – Charles

  • Growing Tooting – the sixth weekend of our local grow-your-own food workshop series

    Last weekend we enjoyed the sixth crop of fortnightly ‘triple-header’ Growing Tooting workshops – one each in Balham, Tooting and Wandsworth. (Plus there’s the fourth series: an extra Wandsworth group running on the intervening weekends).
    As ever, thanks to Martin for the energy and co-ordination!

    What did we do this week?
    As a comprehensive gardening topic we looked in detail at Permaculture – a growing approach that aims to integrate natural systems with social and individual needs for food, clean water, energy… (click here or here for two in-depth web resources).

    To make that practical, in one group Donna presented her own garden as a case study.

    She filmed a video of the back garden, plus photos of the front, for us to get an idea of the spaces and how the garden fits into her life.

    Donna’s team of advisers – an unusual opportunity!

    ‘Observing’ before diving in is as useful in gardening as it is in swimming. Thank you Donna!

    How is the potato progressing?

    Secondly about observing – in our classes we encourage participants to be ‘grower scientist – investigators’ alongside enjoying being outside and putting good food on the table.
    Here’s an example from someone who likes to measure and celebrate her plants’ progress! Why not try it – you learn a lot.

    We have our latest Growing Tooting Handout 6 available – click here to download. The handout includes interrelated features of good common-sense gardening (and of permaculture):

    • Attracting wildlife to control pests
    • Mulch
    • Compost
    • Mycorrhizal soil fungi
    • No-dig gardening 

    To illustrate combing several of these elements, the second Wandsworth group planted up a square foot raised bed which had been prepared with a no-dig approach. First we removed the weeds then covered with a couple of inches of leaf mould from one of the housing estate’s leaf pens, then covered that with sieved soil to achieve a fine tilth for sowing seeds.

    You can see the separate layers

    We planted spinach, nasturtium, basil, plus marigold and tomato seedlings under bottle cloches (we’re experimenting with companion planting for the latter two).

    Finally: two more illustrations of this week’s topics:

    Attracting beneficial insects.
    It’s useful to provide habitats for predators such as ladybirds (the larvae eat loads of greenfly).
    This is a roll of corrugated card inside a plastic bottle with its base cut off.

     
    No-dig and mulch gardening.
    One guru for this approach was Ruth Stout. We’ll share some excerpts from her 1970s book, which is worth looking out for.

    A practical no-dig resource online is SPUDS (Society for the Prevention of Unnecessary Disturbance of the Soil).

    It really works.

    Happy Gardening – Charles

  • Growing Tooting: the fifth weekend of our enjoyable local grow-your-own classes

    Gardeners in Balham, Tooting and Wandsworth are seeing results in the soil, in trying out new skills and having some fun together.
    As our fortnightly free Growing Tooting classes continue, have a look below at what we’ve been doing, and do get in touch to share ideas or with any queries.

    Very proud gardeners! 

    Basil seedlings transplanted into the ground at Melanie’s allotment.

     

     
    More proud gardeners, indoors this time:

    Veronica, Diana and Morena sowing seeds, transplanting lettuce seedlings (Sainsbury’s, 60p), dividing Moroccan mint to take home in pots.

     
    Back outdoors, gardeners of all ages at Ravenstone School are getting their school raised beds going

    Growing Tooting Handout 5 This is now available for participants and for TTT friends who read this blog and who would like to catch up on the details. 
    Themes are Pests, Companion Planting, Square Foot Gardening. 
    Please click here to download and keep a copy of Handout 5.

    Square Foot Gardening is useful for the home gardener because it helps you focus on making best use of space, putting plants together that make sense, and creating an interesting mini-landscape.

    What’s in the square foot bed below?
    Tallest plants top RH corner (= north side).
    Gail’s donated tomato and borage (top RHS squares).
    Maxine’s lemon balm and 2 strawberries (top LHS).
    Seeds elsewhere – bell peppers (top), English marigold (centre), radish, dwarf nasturtiums, basil (bottom L to R)

    Square foot bed planted with veg, herbs and flowers for pollination.

    Here’s a small bed full of different herbs, spotted at Brockwell Park Community Greenhouses


    Some more from weekend 5 on the scientific and growing judgements and choices we make when we are gardening:

    Selecting seeds:
    Bean bed in Balham: last year’s white flowered  beans (which weren’t very productive) and conventional scarlet-flowered beans to plant; sweet peas for extra decoration and pollination.

    Trimming when transplanting to keep plants healthy:
    Trimming off excess leaves on lemon balm and strawberries donated by volunteer, Maxine, who dug them up that morning; we put them in the square foot bed.

    Adding nutrition to a plant in a pot:
    Giving the Brown Turkey fig a top dressing of John Innes No 3 and planting with dwarf nasturtiums to give ground cover and colour.

    And for some insights into high-end gardening, it’s Chelsea Flower Show this week, with lots of media coverage.
    Good growing, everyone!

  • Growing Tooting: the fourth weekend of our flourishing grow-your-own classes

    The fourth weekend in our fortnightly series of workshops on growing your own local food was fun and successful. We’re half way through the run of 8 workshops at each of the sites.
    The Balham-Tooting-Wandsworth structure is stimulating as there are differences and common ground in the settings and interests – plus there’s healthy cross-pollination between locations and local partners. 

    Have a look at the Fourth Growing Tooting Handout by clicking here – all welcome to download and use to help your own garden choices. Collect the set! (And any feedback welcomed, of course).

    Do you know your Rooster from your Vivaldi?
    One theme in the Handout is building awareness of varieties of vegetables and fruit. What’s the benefit of there being so many?

    So, here is a ‘Brown Turkey’ variety fig being planted at the Balham class site, St Mark’s URC

     
     
    TTT recently won a prize draw from The Conservation Foundation (see last item below). Our reward was a diverse bundle of 3 varieties of potatoes: ‘Sherine’, ‘Rooster’ and ‘Vivaldi‘. Each has different characteristics and cropping times…the result of plant breeding over the past 400 years. Thank you! – we have some to give away.
    Plus there’s ‘Centurion‘ onions and ‘Red Sun’ shallots which we’ve planted.

    More news from the classes: Here’s Donna from Balham’s mighty mangetout, with lots of pods set already. You get a sense of gardener’s pride from the tape measure draped alongside. Donna has now planted this out in the polytunnel at Doddington and Rollo Community Roof Garden, with lots of supporting sticks. To complete the synergy, the seeds came from Tamworth Farm Allotment Society….see below for their plant sale next weekend.

    Another theme in the fourth Growing Tooting Handout is watching the weather…and after a May weekend of hotter-than-Ibiza weather, staying aware of frost is probably going to be replaced by hoping for heavy rain (preferably at night). We’ll cover more in the future about growing successfully with low or unpredictable rainfall.

    Two interesting notices looking ahead:
    1 On 14 & 15 May, Tamworth Farm Allotment Society plant sale runs on their site opposite Figge’s Marsh.  A great way to buy plants cheaply and get tips from the gardeners who grew them!

    2 Tools for Change (click on link for details): through this project from The Conservation Foundation, from 9 May to 9 June anyone can donate spare, unloved or broken garden tools at any Wyevale Garden Centre (there’s one in Morden). You’ll receive a 10% discount on new hand tool purchases. There is give and gain in the project: the tools are then repaired at Tools Shed workshops in prisons including HMP Wandsworth, and donated to community groups and schools. Local groups who wish to receive garden tools in spring 2017 can get in touch here.

    In Tooting Community Garden we’ve received tools from this innovative scheme.      
    We’re proud that our outdoor learning project with Gatton School has benefited. See these young gardeners with some dramatic cultivators!

    Tools for Change reduces waste, helps community groups build participation and save their limited cash and has a positive social impact. 
     

    • Growing Tooting: our third weekend of free local food-growing classes went very well

      The third weekend in our practical, sociable and free Growing Tooting workshops went well in Balham, Tooting and Wandsworth. 
      A fourth ‘waiting list’ group starts on the 24th April in Wandsworth. 
      Please scroll down this blog to see our earlier posts.

      At this stage of our classes, participants have seeds sown or seedlings coming through in their own planting pots and trays at home: here’s some spinach on the right. We discussed together just how to get to this stage successfully!



      We also looked at dividing clumps of perennial plants such as mint as in this photo. 
      Each smaller clump can be planted out to multiply your crops. 
      Hands-on superhuman strength sometimes needed if the old clump is dry…

      We have a Third Growing Tooting Handout – all welcome to click here for a copy.

      One group of participants has a new allotment, so the timing is great to share what they are doing and trying out.
      A key message in the classes is to learn from each other, that’s certainly more fun.

      You’ll remember we are encouraging participants to be partly garden-detectives and partly growing-scientists…there’s no need to shy away from some helpful technical tips when learning about growing good local food. One ‘technical’ but practical topic in the third handout is ‘crop rotation’ – swapping around what you grow where, year by year.

      In our Tooting Community Garden plot, we do ‘rotate’ what is planted in the beds every year exactly as in the handout. We keep a sketch map of what we are growing, so we can remember what’s planted, and to help plan for next year.


      Come and visit us sometime at the Community Garden: all welcome to pop in and chat about growing or help out. We’re open every Sunday from 11:00-1:00 at 5 North Drive, SW16 1RN. 
      Latest info on Facebook: Tooting Community Garden.
      Good Gardening!  – Charles

    • Growing Tooting: the second weekend, with three workshops plus an allotment visit

      All went well in the second weekend of our free workshops devoted to growing our own good local food – one class each in Balham, Tooting and Wandsworth. (Details of the Growing Tooting programme here).

      What did we do last weekend? 

      We compared everyone’s window-sill grown pea plants, 2 weeks after sowing.

      Different conditions (amount of light and watering; depth of planting) produced different growth.

      Overall there were crops to be eaten (or planted out) even without having a garden!

      Plus: We looked at the components that make up healthy soil

      We discussed what ‘food’ plants need to feed their leaves, roots and flowers

      We looked at the herbs we like, what conditions they need…and shared recipes

      We now have Handout Number Two – everyone is welcome to click here for a copy

      A group also visited two participants’ breezy allotment – their very first opportunity to garden outdoors.
      As a team, we tried to be observant detectives as well as scientist-gardeners: exploring what is already growing there (celery, blackcurrants, strawberries); proposing what to do first (make a plan, prepare beds, maybe cover future beds with weed-suppressing mulch or sheeting and dig later on); and shared visions of the harvest.

      Thanks to all for your enthusiasm and sharing ideas and questions, however new to gardening you are.

      This Sunday April 10th all local gardeners are invited to drop in at the Tooting Community Garden to say hello, have a cup of tea made with the volcano kettle, and share some seeds if you have spare.
      We’ll be open from 11:00 to 1:00, at 5 North Drive SW16 1RN, tucked behind the big house.